Sonified: The Jellyfish Nebula Supernova Remnant

Explanation: What does a supernova remnant sound like? Although sound is a compression wave in matter and does not carry into empty space , interpretive sound can help listeners appreciate and understand a visual image of a supernova remnant in a new way. Recently, the Jellyfish Nebula ( IC 443 ) has been sonified quite creatively. In the featured sound-enhanced video , when an imaginary line passes over a star, the sound of a drop falling into water is played, a sound particularly relevant to the nebula's aquatic namesake . Additionally, when the descending line crosses gas that glows red, a low tone is played, while green sounds a middle tone, and blue produces a tone with a relatively high pitch . Light from the supernova that created the Jellyfish Nebula left approximately 35,000 years ago, when human ity was in the stone age . The nebula will slowly disperse over the next million years, although the explosion also created a dense neutron star which will remain indefinitely.